1965 Pontiac Tempest Custom Station Wagon

As a youth, I was into the badge-free look, and my long-suffering '76 Impala bore the brunt of it. My odyssey started with the trunk script: a small bit of chromed plastic that read "Chevrolet" was attached only with adhesive. It (and a faded dealer sticker) went first. Weeks later I eyed up those thick-as-a-Cro-Magnon's-skull B-pillars, and decided the "Impala Custom" badges needed to be eighty-sixed. Open mounting holes remained, but she was a dark green metallic, so they barely showed. And it looked good. Well, it didn't look bad. Sort of.

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And then there was the Chevy Bow Tie in the front: the big yellow parallelogram that fastened to her eggcrate grille, providing her with her sole remaining bit of external identity. For a couple of years, I allowed it to remain. But one day a wild hair got the best of me, and within 10 minutes the bow tie was gone. Almost from that moment on, she started giving me trouble. Wouldn't run right. A/C compressor seized. Front end started falling apart. Shot flames out her carburetor during a late-night winter tune-up in front of a buddy's house. Throttle return spring fell off as I approached a crowded intersection. Many of these little things could very easily be equated with her age-she was not quite 17, that dirty little tart-but I knew better. I had stripped her of her identity, and she was revolting against her forced anonymity. The innocent reasoning behind the removals were long gone, but the results were staring me in the face: I corrupted her sweet nature, and she was self-destructing in a convulsive rage. It's not even like she was pretending to be something else: She was stripped of her identity, period. The great wheel of karma was rolling back around and had me pinned flat. I finally came to understand, far too late, the overwhelming importance of identity in an increasingly generic world. Who, or what, you are means everything. I still watch episodes of Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" as penance.

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Though rumors have been whispered throughout the Poncho faithful for years, Pontiac Motor Division never rolled a GTO station wagon off its assembly lines. Oh, more than a few have been created, melding components and front clips from long-forsaken basket cases, creating interesting new wholes and triggering a thousand "what if?" thoughts. However, no matter what they look like, what engine resides underhood, or what letters are bolted into the grille, they are not GTOs-and deep down, they know it.

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The factory four-speed Tempest Custom Safari you see before you very clearly has designs on being a GTO. It always has. While modern rubber, contemporary brakes, and an upgraded suspension bring the chassis up to a more contemporary standard, this Tempest, wisely, forsakes a false identity. It is, was, and always shall be a Tempest. No lettering in the grille to try to pass it off as anything else. Power Tour 2000 attendees, or those readers with DVD-quality memories, may recall seeing the Tempest before. It rolled through Power Tour 2000 without a hiccup, motivated by its original 220,000-mile 326-cube two-barrel wheezer (a mileage figure backed up by a 2-inch-thick stack of receipts that go back to Day One), and was displayed in the MSD booth. Todd Ryden, the car's owner, also contributed his memories to our Power Tour coverage in the Oct. '00 issue. For this year's odyssey, Todd has wisely equipped the Tempest with a 455 backed with a Tremec five-speed, and set the original numbers-matching block and M20 four-speed transmission aside in his garage. Just in case... you know.

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Ignoring the 455 transplant and the eye-searing orange hue (and even the GTO hood), the real story here is why a car with such strange options even exists. "I heard that the original owner needed a wagon, but wanted a GTO," reports current owner Todd Ryden. "It's kind of weird to have a wagon with a four-speed, factory Rally gauges, the Ride and Handling Package suspension, and no other real options." Truth be told, it had a few convenience features-seatbelts, back-up lamps, the parking brake warning light, two-speed wipers, the foam seat cushion, a tinted windshield, the rare remote driver's mirror, and the power tailgate-but nothing that would make it heavier or drag on the engine, like air conditioning. It's even a factory radio delete car. (Somewhere, Magnante is drooling.) It was painted Capri Gold, as close as the first owner was going to get to Tiger Gold. Now this hauler finally gets to act like what it so desperately wants to be-probably as well as (or better than) most GTOs that rolled off the showroom floor-but with its identity intact. Thirty-five years of technological refinement will do that. To make it a little more inhabitable, Todd added a Vintage Air Monster Cooler A/C setup, new Rod Doors door panels, an ACC carpet and floormats, and new OPG seals, weatherstripping, and headliner. The radio, perhaps symbolically, remains deleted.

And it is what it is. It's a Tempest. It's happy being a Tempest. It's not pretending. And we love it for that.